Relative effectiveness of USDA's nonprice export promotion instruments

The USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service funds three types of activities to promote agricultural exports: consumer promotion, technical assistance, and trade servicing. These "instruments" are analyzed using an adaptation of M uth's model. Results indicate that consumer promotion always increases the derived demand for the U.S. agricultural commodity, but that under certain conditions technical assistance and trade servicing can have a perverse eff ect. Applying the model to cotton promotion in Japan, the results suggest t hat, owing to cotton's modest share of retail value, the current emphasis o n consumer promotion may be misplaced. Specifically, it appears that produc er returns can be enhanced by emphasizing technical assistance projects tha t save on the marketing inputs.